


Four drabbles

by lapetitesinge



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Comment Fic, Gen, Multi, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapetitesinge/pseuds/lapetitesinge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four short commentfics from the <a href="http://cloudytea.livejournal.com/138260.html">Boardwalk Empire Comment Ficathon</a> @ LJ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. it's bound to melt your heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written in between the seasons (before the second season premiere). PROMPT: "Margaret/Richard, _it's just like ice building up inside, darling_ "

The beach dream changes after a few weeks, but in the moment it feels entirely natural: he's walking along that same stretch of sand, out near Coney Island where he and his sister used to go as kids, and suddenly she's there beside him, slipping her arm into his. And when he turns to look at her, somehow he's not at all surprised that it's not Pearl but Margaret, her brown eyes warm and content upon his face. It's only once he awakens that he realizes the shift. He's in one of the guest bedrooms now, no longer on the couch downstairs; Nucky hadn't thought much of the idea at first, but she had insisted in that gentle way of hers, saying that he was one of the household now and deserved better. She had made up the bed herself as he hovered in the doorway, both hands on the black leather bag containing everything he owned in the world these days. "There, that's better," she'd said, once she'd arranged the pillow just so and opened the curtains to let in the sunlight. "I do hope you'll be more comfortable in here." As she passed him in the doorway, she touched his shoulder lightly, almost absently, as if she did it all the time.

But now that he's realized he's dreaming about her, about putting his arm around her and feeling her soft hair under his cheek, he can't quite look her in the eye. It's like she'll be able to read it in his face. It feels almost like a violation, like he's seen her changing clothes without her knowing. He feels a coldness spiraling up from inside when he thinks about it, making his chest tighten--surely she wouldn't like it if she knew, or guessed. She doesn't seem to fear him anymore; she used to drop her eyes when he came in the room, but now she smiles. But he's sure she would hate the idea of him thinking of her that way. Perhaps she would even want him to leave, and just the thought of that makes the iciness in his chest sharpen like needles--it's the only place he's stayed for more than a week or two at a time since before the war, unless you counted foxholes. It's the only place that's felt anything like a home in a long time.

Teddy falls in the yard one afternoon as he plays with Emily, chasing her around, pretending to be one of the Witch's winged monkeys, making her shriek with something between laughter and fear. The gash on his knee isn't deep, but he's frightened by the blood and Richard doesn't think twice before crouching down and scooping him up in his arms and carrying him into the house. His breath catches when the boy nestles against his chest; it was only a few weeks ago that he was averting his eyes from him in fear. He takes him into the bathroom and patches him up, cleaning away the blood, not letting himself think about the last time his hands fumbled for gauze as he half-lay on the dark ground in that forest, trying to put his friends back together, boys even younger than he torn open by metal and fire.

That's how Margaret finds him, kneeling on the pristine tiles in front of Teddy perched on the edge of the tub, his tears forgotten, bubbling with laughter as Richard tells him that he's just like the scarecrow, easily repaired; perhaps next time they'll just stuff him with straw. He zooms out of the bathroom to rejoin Emily outside, sparing only the briefest moment to give his mother a hug around the knee as she stands in the doorway. She moves over to Richard and he rises in front of her, unable to prevent himself from looking into her face.

"You're wonderful with them," she tells him with that same smile, warm and easy like a sliver of sun. "Thank you, Mr. Harrow." He can only nod in reply. And as if she does it all the time, she rests her hand against his chest and leans forward and up to kiss him on the cheek. The place where her hands rests is warm. Something inside begins to glow softly and melt.

"Richard," he says, very quietly, while her ear is still close to his mouth. Wisps of her hair brush his jaw. "Please."

She smiles again and turns to leave. "Margaret, then."


	2. collide as the bodies untangle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in between the seasons (before the second season premiere). PROMPT: "Gillian/Angela(/Charlie), _boys will be boys, after all._ "

It doesn't take Gillian long to figure it out. Angela--well, she's always been a bit mournful and doe-eyed, but now her sadness seems to hang, glimmering, in the air around her. She looks right through Jimmy when he's there, barely seeing him, and one afternoon she cuts off her hair. Once Gillian finds the postcard, it all becomes clear.

And she can't deny that she's rather impressed; she wouldn't have thought she had it in her. It's a bit of a cliché, perhaps, finding solace in another's arms while her husband is off at war, but to seek the gentle touch of a woman rather than the cloaking strength of a man, well...there's something in the craving of it that she likes. All the showgirls have tried it at least once, it seems, and she's taken it a bit further than most a few times. And now she can't get rid of the image whenever she's around Angela, although she'd only seen the photographer's wife once or twice: the picture of her lips parting against a smooth neck, her nipples brushing against a pair of full breasts, her paint-stained fingers roaming between hot thighs. It's exciting to imagine her that way, it's forbidden and slightly dangerous, nothing she's ever seen in her before.

She has Charlie now, and he's exciting as well, in his way; all fiery eyes and smirks and hard, fast muscle. She's not sure she believes that she's the first he's had in a long time ( _the first_ woman, _maybe_ , she thinks sometimes), but that doesn't matter; she likes the way he looks at her, like he wants to worship her and make her beg at the same time. She likes to make him smile, and she likes to make him suffer too. She likes how dark his eyes can get.

It doesn't take long, with Angela. Just a few afternoons when Jimmy's not there where she whispers that she understands, yes, it's happened to her as well, and strokes her short hair as those brown eyes well up (yet again). She says she knows her son is a blunt instrument, made of metal now, and that she needs something more, someone silky-light and soft, and it isn't too long before that seashell-pink mouth is on hers, tasting slightly salty, as though from tears. It doesn't take much before Angela's fumbling at her girdle, fingers trembling on the strings, looking for something she's already lost.

Gillian isn't sure if he'd like it, if he'd go all blood-hot and hungry at the sight of them together, as boys so often did, or if he'd see it as a challenge, a mockery of what he's confided to her. So she makes sure to invite him over one day when she's with Angela, and when he walks in she's already got her blouse off and thrown beside her on the couch with her hands tangled in Angela's hair as she kneels before her on the floor, hands on Gillian's hips and her lips trailing slowly up the insides of her thighs.

"What the fuck--" Charlie breathes, eyes going wide at the sight of them. Angela raises her head in some alarm, but Gillian just grins lazily at the both of them and extends a hand towards Charlie, slowly turning her wrist, beckoning him. She likes that she can make him flush like that with a simple gesture.

"Now don't be jealous, dear," she tells him in a purr. "There's enough to go around for all of us." And in another minute he's shrugging off his jacket and moving swiftly for the couch, and he pulls her head back by the hair to receive his rough kiss. Below, Angela's mouth is warm against her knee.

There have been so many times when she didn't have a choice. So now, when she does, she takes everything she wants.


	3. the last of humankind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written between the seasons (before the first season premiere). PROMPT: "Richard/Al:
> 
>  _Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay  
>  To mould me Man, did I solicit thee  
> From darkness to promote me?_"

He calls him "Frankenstein" because he remembers hearing a radio play about the mad doctor and his monster when he was a kid. It had scared the daylights out of him, and his father had whacked him on the back of the head and told him to be a man, _sii un uomo; i mostri non esistono._ Sometimes he wonders if that's true; wonders if he's more monster than man himself now. He doesn't think he can remember how fear feels.

He calls him "Frankenstein" and laughs every time, and after a few times Jimmy growls "cut it out, Al" in that soft and deadly voice of his. Richard always acts like he hasn't heard, but when Jimmy defends him Al thinks he almost smiles--if you can call it a smile; more like a twitch. He stops for a few days, but then he slips and says it again, and this time Richard turns his head and look at him with one hazel eye that seems to have the sharpness of two. Al feels the back of his neck prickle.

"Frankenstein...is the doctor," Richard says, in his voice like rocks in a tin can. "Not the monster. In the book." Jimmy smirks.

Al blinks. "Well, 'scuse me, college boy," he says, forcing another laugh. "Ain't everyone's had all the time for readin' books like you. I dropped outta school when I was fourteen. Had to get a job."

"Hmm." He's still studying him, his unreadable eye roving over Al's face. For one strange moment, he wants to turn away, but not to avoid seeing: to avoid being seen. Somehow, he suddenly feels like the scarred one. "Didn't...read it in school. I brought it with me...to France."

Al says nothing. Without really trying or wanting to, he can picture it; the image assembles itself in his mind: Richard, unscarred, unmasked, dark-haired and handsome, crouching in a trench with his rifle over his back, hunched over a book in a light rain, perhaps, smoking a cigarette down to the very end, hearing distant explosion and waiting, waiting...somehow he can imagine his face how it was, with his hair falling into those deep eyes and a mouth forever on a verge of a smile.

He calls him "Frankenstein" because he's afraid of him, afraid of what he _knows_ , what he's done and what he's seen, because he knows it's more than he himself will ever understand. He wasn't _over there_ , as Jimmy and Richard say to each other; he'll always be a pace or two behind, and he can't tell if he's less of a man or more of a monster for it. While they were there and he was here he wouldn't have trades places for the world, but now part of him wishes more than anything that he could go back and change it; that he could go over there with them and leave something of himself behind, so at least he'd have an excuse for what he is.

He hears their shouts at night and wants to slip into their nightmares, just to know. He wants to know how it feels to fall.


	4. neither have I wings to fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written after 2x01, "21." PROMPT: "Jimmy/Richard, _It's the little things that they do when they think no one is watching_ "
> 
> [For purposes of this fic, we're pretending Richard was living at Nucky's house before this, and that the events of "21" (omg scrapbook adfas'dakl;fmfdk) took place at Jimmy's house. I don't even know.]

He arrives five days after Jimmy and Angela move into the new house. Jimmy had asked him to come the day after Nucky had showed it to them and said that it was theirs--told him, really. "Well, you gotta come stay too," he'd said, as though it wasn't even a question. "We've got plenty of room now, you can stay as long as you like." But he hadn't come at first; he hadn't been able to bring himself to pack his things (few though they are) yet again and go to him. He followed him from Chicago, he moved into Nucky's home when he asked him to, and yet there's something about this, about coming to his new home, this place that is barely yet his, and making it his own as well, that seems to make his breath stop in his chest. His hands shake, the way they did all the time in the weeks after he got back when he wasn't holding his rifle, and his head seems to spin every time he goes to gather his things and leave, and it takes a while to understand what it is: it's too much. It's too good. It's more than he has ever allowed himself to want.

But he finally arrives on his doorstep, his hat pulled low, his bag in one hand, and Jimmy smiles when he opens the door. "Been wondering when you'd turn up," he says, but he doesn't ask him to explain. He never does. When he steps inside Angela smiles at him as well from the table, but it's not the same; it's a mechanical thing with nothing behind it, like light through glass. Jimmy's smile has warmth and weight, and he lets himself believe that it is just for him.

It's not as hard as he thought it would be, staying with them. He thought it would be worse, seeing them together, living beside the little moments between them, her hand passing absently through his hair as he sits at the table; his lips on her shoulder when she stands by the sink; both of them laughing with Tommy on the living room rug. One night he hears them making love. And it stings, bitter and cold yellow, and yet it also eases him, like a warm hand against his chest, to see him happy and to watch him love.

But still, he wants. For a while he could read himself no better than he could the books he'd once loved; he felt indecipherable, like all the words had fallen out of him. But he understands himself again now, and he's not sure if it's better or worse to know what it is he desires, since it is right before him and yet a million miles away.

So he hides it all away, inside himself and inside his books, hoping Angela isn't noticing how her Life magazines are going missing after a week or two of sitting on the living room table. He likes the work, slow, repetitive and simple, something to do with his hands that's not made of heat and metal and roaring death. He sits alone in the room Jimmy has given him--he can't quite think of it as _his_ \--and cuts out the pictures, as though treating them with such reverence will bring them to life.

One night he sits there, listening to the sea rushing quietly outside of his window, working over his books. His mask lies on the desk beside him; it had been a warm evening and it was starting to itch. The radio downstairs had stopped playing several minutes ago, but he still hums the tune very faintly in his head as he reaches for the paste.

Footsteps in the hall. The doorknob turns. "Richard, are you--"

He has less than a second's heartbeat to decide. He slams the book closed and grabs for the magazines, shoving them hastily into an innocent-looking pile as he jumps to his feet and Jimmy enters the room. Jimmy breaks his sentence off and looks at Richard curiously. His heart pounds, and it's a long moment before he realizes. He turns away.

"I--sorry." His hand leaps for the mask.

"Richard." He makes it sound like a paragraph. "Come on. You don't have to do that." He steps into the room, towards him. "You don't...you don't have to hide with me."

His hand trembles and stops against the edge of the desk, but he can't turn his face back. He doesn't want him to see--but not just the scars. Maybe they don't matter at all. It's not about what isn't there, it's about what is--he's afraid he'll see it written all over him, everything he wants and everything he feels, all there, twice as visible on the one half left, as clear as on the pages of his books. But he sees him out of the corner of his eyes, taking another step closer.

"Come on," he says again, quietly. "It's OK. You know it doesn't bother me." Richard still can't move, not until he feels Jimmy's hand against his shoulder. Then he turns, and when he does Jimmy is there, close against him, and his lips press gently, briefly against his mouth, dry and soft and slightly warm. Then he pulls back and gives a hint of that smile. "See? You believe me now?"

Richard looks at him, and it's easy now. "Yes." He can breathe again. He's given him back air, and words. His hands aren't shaking when he reaches for him again; somehow now he is good again, and he allows himself to want.


End file.
